Unique events that help in the work

The last month has been all about the Mormon Tabernacle Choir tour and the Hill Cumorah pageant.  These are some of the unique events that only take place in the Rochester New York mission.  As missionaries, they are obviously encouraged to invite as many people as possible to attend these events and Christopher took advantage of these opportunities to do just that.  Christopher told us all about attending some of the choir concerts in Palmyra and at the Chautauqua Institution.  He was hoping to run into one of his former high school choir teachers but found out that she was no longer in the choir.  But Christopher said that they all had a wonderful and very spiritual time attending these events and were able to take some of the people that they have been teaching to see the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. 

The Hill Cumorah pageant has been another big event.  Over the last couple of weeks, Christopher has spent a lot of time there meeting and talking with people as they arrived to watch the pageant.  He told us that the traditional missionary work has almost come to a stop during the time that the pageant takes place.  Most of the missionaries spend their time talking with people at the pageant, answering questions and helping out wherever they can.  They also take the opportunity to invite some of the people that they have been teaching, to attend the pageant.  This is an opportunity for them to learn a lot about the message that the Church has and the gospel that each of these missionaries are spending their time to teach. 

One of side benefits of being in the same mission where one of the premiere events of the Church takes places, is that there are bound to be a lot of people that you know passing through.  This has been the case with Christopher as well.  He has seen some old friends from high school, some old Ward members from back home and various other people who had traveled out to Palmyra to see the pageant.  We also had the opportunity to hear about some of these experiences from people in our Ward who were their and met up with Christopher as he was talking to many of the pageant visitors. 

Christopher's latest email home was a short one, but a good one.  His mission president had told him that once everything calms down following the pageant, he would transfer Christopher to a new area.  Christopher simply wrote home last week and told us that after spending the first six months of his mission in Batavia, he has been transferred to Buffalo.  He also said that his new companion is great.  Hopefully this next week, we will get a little more detail on what he has been up to and what new experiences he has been having in the Buffalo area.